WARHAMMER 40,000: A Thousand Tiny Suns (40k/Exalted Crossover!)

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Hammer of Jove (4.0)
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    • You considered your options - mind whirling - and then...slowly...you looked at Brutus. Through pitted glass, you considered his offer. His idea. The lessons you had learned in the schola. Of how Eldar were perfidious liars and tricksters, mercurial xenos that would stab a human in the back for the slightest of gain. But there were other memories. Deeper ones. Sad ones. Angry ones. Ones that wished to...to...

    The desire was lost on your tongue.

    But, quietly, you said: "We will heed your council, honorable Ultramarine. We shall go to the Craftworld Eldar. Agreed?" You glanced around yourself. Kit gave a nod. Amberly, who still seemed quite smug about her ability to intercept non-psychic messages with sword and sheer elan, nodded and smirked.

    "A-A...All right! H...how, uh...how do we get there?" you asked.

    Captain Brutus stood and bowed his head low. "We will gladly take you. Though, ahem, I do still wish to learn more of your unique condition. Aurora is the wisest woman I know, and she can surely divine much about your abilities and origin." Right. You had been a bit...evasive about the full extent of your abilities and their origins and the unsettling amount you had learned about them in your time on this world. You nodded, your hand going to your mask straps to make sure they were laying flush. Kit smiled slightly.

    "I, uh, wasn't aware that the Space Marines accepted women," he said.

    Brutus chuckled. "A common misconception," he said, with the jovial attitude of someone who was ever pleased to dispel confusion, or someone who had made a hobby of a subject and wanted very badly to lay out everything he had studied with such meticulous eagerness. "You see, the art of turning man to astartes begins with the implantation of the geneseed. However, it's not entirely clear the...precise...ahem...process that that entails. Many of the records have been lost, and our traditions vary wildly from other chapters. Some believe that only men can accept a geneseed. Some believe that only a woman. Some believe only man who is born as woman can. Some believe only woman who is born as man can. Some believe that anyone who accepts a geneseed must be willing to undergo chemical castration and survive a year and a day in that state, to properly balance their humors. For every chapter, there is a different method, a different tradition...and...well, I've never managed to aquire an actual series of success rates - all are kept so bloody secret, you'd imagine we're all competing or something." He frowned. "The Codex Astartes says that our brothers in arms remain brothers in truth, be they clad in red, blue, or any other heraldic you can imagine...but many marines have turned away from the Codex, have found new paths. Some to good ends, like our brothers in the Salamanders-"

    You had been so rapt, so attentive, so interested in what he was saying, that you barely noticed the straps being fixed around you by Kit. You blinked, realizing you had walked onto the Thunderbolt without noticing.

    "-or the Space Wolves, but others have been taken to dark, unsettling places." Brutus shook his head. "Remind me some day to tell you of my century serving as an attaché to the Marines Malevolent. If anything could have turned my heart against the Emperor, it would be those dark days."

    "...h-how did they pick people for geneseeds?" You asked.

    Brutus frowned. "The ones that screamed the least when the metal flower was inserted, I'm afraid."

    You remembered vivid depictions of the Ecclesiastical interrogation tool in your schola days. Your thighs snapped together despite yourself and your flinch was clear enough to be visible through the mask.

    Kit cocked his head.

    His words, somewhat lost in the din of the thunderhawk screaming into the air on a plume of plasma flame and smoke, were quite treasonous. Fortunately, you were fairly sure no one else in the cabin could read lips as well as you could.

    ***
    ​

    The shuddering and shaking and noise dropped off swiftly as you entered orbit. Through the thin, narrow portholes - visible by craning your head around in the massive seat you were strapped into - you could see the sleekness of the Hammer of Jove hanging in orbit. The chair you were in was clearly made to carry a fully armored Astartes warrior, and the sensation of being a child stuck into an adult's chair through an excessive use of adjuctive tape was...unsettling. Then the unsettling sensation of bigness got enhanced and underlined as the sleekness you had imagined transfigured, moment by moment, to complexity and vastness. You had...not realized quite how large a Battle Barge was until the thunderhawk finally came within the mouth of one of the cavernous shuttlebays. Gold and blue and white paint by the kilometer sprawled along fiercely gothic butresses, while macro-weaponry the size of an entire hab block jutted from the spine and the hammerhead shaped prow. Hundred of men and women in blue robes that harkened to the slick, skintight jumpsuits of the average voidworker were waiting for the landing, and as the restraints released you and you were able to skid off the chair, they hurried forward.

    When the gangplank lowered, you saw that the chapter serfs were already at working seeing to every pore of the vehicle that had carried you to orbit. There was no other sign of a single other space marine in the entire cavernous bay, while three chapter serfs in gold trimmed robes hurried to prostrate themselves before Brutus.

    "Captain Brutus," one said. "Librarian Aurora, we are honored to once more have you return to our blessed vehicle."

    "The honor is mine, Ship-Commander Thule," Brutus said. "41-22, this is Ship-Commander Thule. Ship-Commander Thule, this is 41-22."

    The Ship-Commander bowed to you as well.

    "Y-You don't need to-"

    "You are Kreig, my lady," he said.

    "D-D-Does everyone in Ultrimar do that!?" You stammered, lifting your hands up to ward it off.

    "Any in my presence do," Brutus said, his voice stern and frowning. With Kit emerging and Amberly behind him, Brutus introduced them as well, with just as much seriousness and honor. The Ship-COmmander bowed to each. Then, politely, he said.

    "Do you wish a place to store your...um...hunting lance?" he asked, regarding the Lens-Lance you clutched to your chest like it was your lifeline. The weapon did look rather scrap built and you could tell he didn't think much of it.

    "It's very deadly!" you stammered. "I mean, uh...uh..."

    ---
    [ ] Store the Lens Lance. Why'd you need it?
    [ ] Keep the Lens Lance. Just in case.

    Also!

    [ ] Go with Aurora to have her divine at you immediately.
    [ ] Bring everyone, even Amberly, to have Aurora divine at each of you!
    [ ] Decline to let Aurora study any of you - you don't need to reveal every secret you have, right?


    Health: Fine
    Anima: Glowing
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 5 | Solar XP: 6
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 19 | GXP: 21 | WXP: 6
     
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    • Divinations (4.1)
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    • "Oh, no, uh, I need this!" you said, hurriedly clutching the Lens Lance to your chest. The serfs blinked and exchanged glances with one another, but the Ship-Commander bowed low.

    "Of course, honorable guest," he said.

    You gulped behind your resperator - and then walked with Kit and Amberly, who apparently seemed downright eager to see what a diviner Librarian could accomplish - away from Captain Brutus and the Ship-Commander. You just barely heard the Ship-Commander, speaking to one of his serfs.

    "Tag 41-22 for alerts if she gets near the outer hull," he said, dryly. "That's a hunting lance."

    Behind you, the serfs all looked significantly more constipated.

    ***
    ​
    "So, is it...Battle-Sister Aurora?" Amberly asked, curiously, as you followed after the Librarian.

    "No," she said. "I am Battle Brother Aurora. Battle Brother is a Low Gothic corruption and enrichment of Battlebra, an Old Gothic shorthand slang for Battlefield Bolter Action Team. The original Legionaries who served the Emperor would operate in teams armed with volkite weapons, with heavy bolters being used for secondary and tertiary fronts. Since those fronts primarily faced human and human descended foes, our enemies called us Battlebras, which over time shifted to Battle Brothers, and, thus, stuck." She sighed, quietly. "Do you know what the curse of being a Librarian is?"

    "Being...ps...psychic?" you asked, hesitantly. Kit shot you a warning look.

    Aurora paused, and turned to look down her nose at you.

    "No," she said. "We read too much and are, thus, painfully aware of how profoundly stupid the universe is."

    She had stopped before a large rectangular door which hissed and clunked open behind her. Amberly took a step forward, but Aurora held out her palm.

    "Stay yourself, Commissar," she said, her voice short. "This is a disrobing chamber, not my sanctum."

    "Oh," Amberly said.

    The door shut with a hissing squeal of pistons and clunking metal. As the three of you waited out there, Amberly fidgeted. She turned to face Kit. "Kit, I think she doesn't like me," she said.

    "No, no, she likes you fine," Kit said, nodding and reaching over to ruffle Amberly's blond locks - which had been painfully straight despite her hat and the ride up into orbit.

    "Hey!" she hurriedly combed her hair back into something approaching order. "A-And she can't stop calling 41 here honorable this and honorable that, and bold Krieger. I'm just...Commissar."

    You bit your lip. It was not very Krieg to say yes, well, but they've met you.

    "Commissars do important duties!" she said.

    "Maybe she's more brusque than Captain Brutus," Kit said. "She does read a lot."

    The door opened and Aurora emerged. She was just as impressive in a simple blue and white tunic and leggings, towering over the three of you as easily as she had in her powered armor - though now, you could at least see her neck, and the almost ridged layers of her black carapace. It gave her clothing an odd almost bell shape, like she was wearing some kind of bone coreset, and when she moved, you could hear the servo whirring had been replaced with a grinding sound of carapace touching carapace.

    "Come," she said. "So, you three have some...unusual abilities. I'm not sure what to believe, exactly."

    "It's not psychic powers!" you added, quickly.

    "Would it be so bad if it were?" Aurora asked, arching an eyebrow.

    "...n...no..y...y..k...bu...uh..." you stammered.

    Kit chuckled. "Uh, did you know that on Krieg, an entire infantry platoon is able to subsist entirely on boiled shoeleather. 41-22 is just keeping herself in practice."

    "W...What?" you asked.

    "Foot in mouth," Amberly hissed.

    "But..ghtum..." You spluttered.

    Aurora let out the deepest booming belly laugh you'd ever heard from a woman. "Ahaha!" She laughed, clapping her hand on your shoulder so hard you were almost flipped onto the deck plating. "You three have the camaraderie we love to see in the Guard," she said, her voice amused. "I do wish that we could still maintain the Solar Auxilaria's standards - if only because I think you'd look amazing in their uniforms."

    You were scarlet behind your mask, which made it very easy to keep your dignity as you arrived in the sanctum. The doors opened to reveal an austere library, with vaulted ceilings and countless stacks spread across what seemed to be a quarter of a deck's worth of space. Candles on servo skulls drifted by, but while there was a small shrine to Ultimar dominating a few dozen meters in the back and a few Ultramarine pennants up on the wall, the place seemed shockingly undecorated to your eyes. Instead, more space was taken up by books - stacked, racked, placed hither and yon, spread throughout this space. Many of them were solid manuscripts, but there were also data slates and some data-crypts that were scattered here and there. You saw a few chapter serfs walking amongst the books, but there was one other space marine, several hundred meters away and only visible thanks to being on the second level.

    "T-There are so few space marines aboard," you whispered.

    "There are only a thousand in the chapter," Aurora said. "Now, let us begin. I wish to probe your fates, and we shall use my preferred method."

    She walked you to a reading niche. There were what appeared to be a hexagonal board covered with pieces.

    "It's regicide," Kit said, quietly.

    "What is it?" you asked.

    "A...a game," he said, quietly.

    "What does it...do?" you asked.

    "Entertain. Pass the hours. Uh, it also teaches some basic fundamentals of tactics, I think," he said, producing a faint 'ah' from you.

    "I see, I see. For a second, I thought it was just...something that had no purpose," you said, producing an arched eyebrow from Aurora.

    "I beat my father nine times out of ten," Amberly said, her voice deeply smug as she took the seat across from the regicide board before anyone could stop her. "I'm ready."

    "We're...not going to play the game, Commissar," Aurora said.

    "...oh," Amberly said. She coughed. "I knew that."

    "Close your eyes," Aurora said, her hands clasped behind her back. You felt her attentive focus grow upon you - as if the whole room was growing closer and tighter. The wood creaked around you and you fidgeted as Amberly closed her eyes. "Now, reach out."

    Amberly's brow furrowed. You swore you could hear her brain flexing. She actually gritted her teeth.

    Aurora sighed, then reached down, taking hold of Amberly's entire arm with her massive palm. She hefted Amberly's arm up. "With your hand."

    "...oh..." Amberly's face was as red as your hair was now.

    "Let your hand relax," Aurora said. Her voice was soft. Amberly's fingers started to go limp. The board seemed to twinkle as you cocked your head slowly to the side. "Touch the piece that calls to you." Aurora's quiet voice seemed to buzz in your bones. Deep, lulling. Amberly's fingers drifted down, touching the Primarch. She shifted it forward, bumping aside two of the Guardsmen. The Primarch skidded forward across the board. Amberly's voice was soft.

    "Bronze..." she whispered. "Bronze. Beats Gold."

    She knocked over the Emperor on the far side of the board with the Primarch.

    Everyone was very still. Aurora rubbed her chin. "That's...not the future," she said, cocking her head. "That's strange. That's very...very strange." She cocked her head, then held out her hand. For just a moment, you saw crackling witchfire tingling along her fingers.

    Then she was picked bodily up by some invisible force and thrown against the wall.

    Amberly jerked upwards, yelping, as she opened her eyes. The regicide table went skidding as Aurora wheezed, sitting up and rubbing at her nose - her lip was split and she was bleeding. You hefted your Lens Lance, aiming it around wildly, while Aurora slammed her palm against the wall-vox. "Bridge!" she barked. "Are we in translation!?"

    "uh...n-no, Battle Brother," a rumbly voice came through. "We're still two days from the red line."

    "What the fuck was that then?" Aurora asked, rubbing her jaw as she took her hand from the vox. "I felt a presence slap me in the face, as if we were in the midst of a Geller breach. It was furious. Incensed. Frustrated. It tasted of...blue..." She frowned.

    "...Tzneetch?" you asked.

    Everyone looked at you.

    "You got that from blue?" Aurora asked.

    "What's a Tzneetch?" Amberly hissed.

    "I...uh, changer of the ways," you said, blushing. "I've...got some basic, uh...I've been studying the occult. A little. So I know how to, to, to, you know...so, anyway, they were mad? Frustrated?" You asked, hurriedly.

    "Yeah. Frustrated. And taking it out on the only...thing they can get their talons on..." Aurora said. She reached into one of her pockets and you tensed, not quite not readying your lance. Instead, she withdrew a single throne coin. The golden coin winked as she flicked it to Kit. "Flip that, tell me, skull or throne."

    Kit, his spine tensed and his tigerishness on full readiness, frowned. He flipped it, caught it, slapped it against his knuckles. "Throne," he said.

    "Again," Aurora said, her voice intent.

    Flip. Catch.

    "Skull."

    "Again."

    Aurora had him do it six times - and each time, Amberly fidgeted and squirmed and clearly wanted to ask what was going on - but the Librarian was so intense, so focused, that you shushed her each time. Finally, Aurora lowered her hand and breathed out a slow sigh. "Well, my specialization won't help here," she said, quietly. "You cannot be divined. You have no fate."

    "...beg pardon?" Kit asked.

    "I was practicing the simplest of all auguries. I should have been able to call each flip, every single time - but instead, I only called it roughly the same number of times that a human would have with mere luck. My divination isn't bringing back wrong results, as it might if you were blocking me with a psy power of your own. No. It is bringing back no results, which is impossible unless there's no fate to be divined."

    "W...What does that mean?" you asked.

    "It means that you are outside of the grand tapestry of potentiality that exists before us," Aurora said, quietly. "No wonder the Enemy of Sanity himself hates you so much."

    ---
    You can do literally anything, without ordainment or prediction...what do you do?

    [ ] Stand perfectly still in a moment of complete panicked realization of the enormity of existential freedom
    [ ] Write in

    Health: Fine
    Anima: Glowing
    Willpower: 4/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 5 | Solar XP: 6
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 19 | GXP: 21 | WXP: 6
     
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    • Freedom (4.2)
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    • You remained perfectly, completely still. What feels like eight months pass in a single paralyizing, completely terrifying thought, a thought that consumes your brain from the stem to the base.

    Freedom.

    What even was freedom? Krieg had once tried to claim freedom, pathetic, hateful freedom. It had burned for it. Burned to the cinder, burned to the bedrock. Horus had wanted freedom, and he had destroyed the galaxy. The Locust Crusaders had wanted freedom, when they had devoured tracts of the East, scraping out vast hectares of green soil and growing things.

    ...wait, what?

    "41?" Kit asked. "Uh, are you all right."

    You grabbed his arm, trembling slightly from your head to your toes. Your brain was still whirling around and around and around. Freedom meant you couldn't rely on the God-Emperor, you couldn't rely on fate, you couldn't rely on anything but yourself. And what was 41-22? A stick figure? A tiny little woman, birthed from a creche, with nothing in your heart? Your will was weak - you hadn't even tried to understand or slow down this strange feeling you had for Kit, you had just let it carry away - and now you had freedom? Freedom while the galaxy burned?

    Aurora, her face set into broad lines, looked at you. Her finger went to her brow, brushing her tonsure back, fingers hesitating on the tiny studs she had in her forehead. "I think she's undergoing something akin to what Primaris talk about, passing through the Rubicon. A terrible moment of realization."

    You breathed in, then closed, and then wrapped your arm around Kit. He slid his arm arm around your shoulder...and held you.

    And to be honest?

    That was what you needed right then.

    While you might be free, you still had your duties. To Kit. To the Imperium. To your Emperor.

    Yeah. Yeah. You turned, mask bumping against Kit's shoulder as he squeezed you even more firmly.

    "Well, it's not so scary as all that," Amberly said, confidently, her nose lifting into the air. "We comissaris have that kind of freedom all the time anyway."

    You glowered at her.

    That also helped.

    ***
    ​
    The battle-barge Hammer of Jove continued on its course through the twisting, winding infinity of the Warp. The soft whispering susurrations of the daemons beyond hissed and scrabbled at the Geller Field - and crept against the shuttered windows, crawled through the corridors. The soft chanting of the Chapter Serfs at their prayer filled the air in return, playing one against the other. Your staterooms, when you had been shown them, immediately made you want to dismiss them as preposterous, absurd, there was no way that you could live somewhere so preposterously luxurious.

    "It's barely bigger than our tent," Kit said, his voice amused.

    "We apologize for the size, but this is a battle-barge, not a rogue trader starship," Aurora said. "This is one of the chambers set aside for the Chapter Serfs - we Astartes live somewhat more..." She hesitated. "Well, we don't exactly need a bed, nor do we need so much space. It leaves room for our gear and other places for our shipboard tasks. Makes the ship more efficient. You two are, of course, invited to join us for breakfast, lunch and dinner - the hours are listed in that small tome there. Get comfortable - we're a few weeks from the last sighting of the eldar craftworld near Ultimar. I believe it is called in the Asyurani tongue...Lyanden."

    "R-Right..." you said, nodding. "We'll be fine, don't worry."

    Aurora gave you a bow that still felt entirely unearned, then turned and started to pad off. She was shockingly quiet for such a large woman. you looked back from her to the bedroom, where you saw that Kit had sat on the bed. He smiled at you, then in a shimmer of silvery fog, he had transformed into a large, lazy looking tyger. His striped body sprawled atop the bedsheets, and he clearly was taking a lot of pleasure at taking up as much of the bed as he could. Your thumb closed the door behind you and then dimmed the lights with a quiet gesture and prayer. Once it was dimmed, you hesitated, reached up and removed your mask. The tingling feeling of being unmasked around Kit was still strange on your lips.

    "I'm...still afraid," you whispered.

    Kit purred, a deep thrumming noise. I know, that purr seemed to say.

    You walked over, then sat down on the bed beside your lunar mate. Your fingers slid along him, slowly. Then, slightly, you smiled. "But...if...we're free from fate, and only duty can guide us, does that mean that there's no chance of those awful tragedies you always hear about in the mortality plays?" Your finger traced the line of his ear, causing it to twitch. He let out a deep, dismissive yawn. Without even saying a word, he made you smile.

    Turns out?

    You didn't need the whole bed. Tygers were most excellent cushions and blankets - decadent, sinful, and inefficient as they were.

    ***
    ​
    What is Elsewhere?

    A vast space. Dimensionally transcendental. Pinched out of the Wyld, formed to hold the endless panoplies of the Chosen.

    This thought flickers through your mind in the dream.

    There's so many interesting things about Elsewhere.

    Teleportation is impossible.

    How does that come into your dream.

    Teleportation is impossible.

    Hmm, true, save, that it wasn't. The Warp...the Wyld...it could be used. It was a place where distance meant nothing - and as the Warp now spread beneath the poles of reality itself, as if Creation had been dissolved and spread wide, it meant one simply had to dive into the Warp, and take advantage of the meaninglessness of it. A shortcuit.

    Elsewhere is carved from the Wyld, taking the exact same advantage: Timeless. Static.

    Why was your mind whirling around this?

    You were trying to sleep, and your brain was thinking about this. You could feel a paw on your chest through the dream, keeping you pinned, even as you squirm.

    What is Elsewhere?

    Your eyes opened.

    "Elsewhere is to time as the Webway is to the space," you said, your voice soft.

    "Mmmhmm?" Kit rumbled, sleeping still. He had shifted into his glorious tygre-man form.

    For some reason, that struck you as vitally, vitally important.

    Then you fell asleep again.
    ​
    ---
    What do you do on your flight?

    [ ] Train skills (write in what skills)
    [ ] Train attribute (write in what attribuets)
    [ ] Awaken evocation in the Lens Lance (making it more powerful)
    [ ] Study Charms (write in which skill - but remember, it needs to have dots in it)
    [ ] Eschew training for fixing things (walk around the ship doing repairs to bank crafting XP)
    [ ] Write In

    oh also I'm baaaaaaaaack!

    Health: Fine
    Anima: Glowing
    Willpower: 4/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 5 | Solar XP: 6
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 19 | GXP: 21 | WXP: 6
     
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    • Absurd, Backbreaking Nonsense (4.3)
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    • The first three days aboard ship, you stayed in your cabin. Kit left, to explore, and he came back with amazing stories.

    Rooms the size of entire hab blocks, full of space marines in prayer. Chapter serfs by the dozen, bowed and moving about their shifts. Machines that he had never seen before, cracking and humming. Space Marines who seemed to be almost a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus - with mechadendrites and similar levels of clerical knowledge. It was painfully clear what he wanted, you could smell it through the mask.

    Come on, 41. Look out there and see what there is to see.

    Finally, though, Kit hit on it.

    "I ran into Amberly and she was wondering if you'd ever use the training rooms," Kit was saying, casually, as he returned to the room to find you praying at the shrine of the Emperor that the Ultramarines had been polite enough to give you.
    The next day, you started out of the room. It wasn't like you'd let Amberly of all people think you were shy.

    And it was just as you had feared.

    You went out in your most humble rig - blue jacket, red pants, the most unadorned mask you had, and without any medals or badges. You looked for all the world like what you were. A simple Krieger, walking purposefully towards the practice rooms. And yet, the first two marines that you ran into - both of them clad in the simple robes the Ultramarines preferred when not wearing their powerful armor - both started as they saw you and immediately gave you their leg. You held up your hands, stammering. "P-Please don't," you said.

    "Honorable one, it is a delight to meet you," one said, his nut brown skin gleaming as he dipped his head. His voice was remarkably light and high, almost airy.

    "Likewise," the other said - he had a bright shock of brilliant blond hair. Though, thankfully, both rose from their knee. "I am Brother William - this is Brother Cadwell."

    "Uh...I'm...41-22..." you said, ducking your head forward.

    "We've heard a great many remarkable things about you, young Krieger," Brother William said, his voice as deep and rumbling as all space marines you'd met so far, save for Brother Cadwell, of course. "And I'm sure you're quite sick of hearing this, but we hold the Kreiger in high regard."

    "We're really not worth all this," you said, shame burning behind your mask.

    "Nonsense," Brother Cadwell said, his voice suited to the warm smile he gave you. "No people give of themselves so gladly, nor with so little thought as the folk of Krieg. It is the least that we can do to honor you, as befits your sacrifice."

    "Please, Cadwell," Brother William said, gently. "Can't you see you're embarrassing her?" This gentle advice, of course, left her even more embarrassed.

    "My apologies, honorable one," Cadwell said, chuckling. "We get to interact so little with others not of our clade. I did not mean to cause offense."

    "N-No...None taken!" you stammered. "I...you can...whatever! Ask me anything you wish. I am your servant! An open book!"

    "Ah, delightful," Brother William said. "But, first, do you require any breaking of your fast? It is almost the hour of terce, we normally break our fast then in the refectory - though, sorry to say, many of my brothers are a mite antisocial until they've had their kaff and prefer to take their meals in their quarters or in private study halls."

    "T-There's enough room for that kind of thing?" you asked, a bit curious.

    "Well, this ship is made to carry a quarter of a Legion," Cadwell said, his voice dry. Your brain pinged with that. "It's always had more room than it should have."

    Men in crude armor, rapidly produced. Hammered into shape and crammed onto their bodies. Some still have cancers from the hurried implantation. One vomits in his helmet mic. The whole Thunderhawk trembles and shakes as Interex infared beamers lance through the sky. Evasive fire causes ablative armor to boil off into steam.

    You shook your head, the memory flash leaving you...discombobulated.

    "Well, uh, I am a little hungry," you admitted. "I can go a few days without eating."

    The two nodded.

    As your small party of three made their way through the ship, Cadwell asked, in that cheerful way of his: "So, are you married to that young Cadian with the purple eyes?"

    Fortunately, before you could say anything, your eyes fell on a trio of heavily burdened chapter serfs. They were clad in the gear of a techwight, with the heavy collections of seals and scrolls, wrenches, measuring tape, nail bags, magnetic seals, fuse-clamps, isolinear processors, syntactic neuronal clumps, containers full of black bile, yellow humors, and adhesive sticks, all required to do the onerous tasks of keeping ancient, cantankerous machinery from wheezing to death. A servitor entombed in the wall was writhing slightly, hissing and gurgling as you stepped away from Cadwell and William with a quick. "One moment!"

    You snatched up a bottle of black bile, two adhesives sticks, the bag of nails, and five purity seal scrolls. You tossed off a quick. "Sorry, just-"

    Your palm glowed with a shimmering skein of golden essence. You slappy your hand along the scroll and wax, dragging up some bile, your other hand flicking out. Nails slammed into place as, in a blur, you put together a seal over one of the malfunctioning machines, easing it. You stepped to the next and next and next, your brow glowing brilliantly with your Twilight caste mark. Once your hands were empty, you walked past the stunned chapel serfs and to the two towering space marines, who were both gaping in shock at the completely repaired corridor.

    "Done!" you said, panting slightly. "Um. So. What were we saying? Right, uh, the breakfast!"

    ***
    ​
    On the fifth day, Kit found you. It wasn't that you had been avoiding him. Far from it. You and he had slept together every night. And gone out every day, with a table set aside for you at the refectory, with food to eat, water to drink, and battle brothers to talk too. You had heard many a fascinating story about distant worlds and strange adventures - it seemed that while space marines got involved in a great many wars, far more wars involved a lot more walking, paperwork, and talking to strange human cultures than you'd have thought.

    But no.

    On the fifth day, Kit found you because you had found the annoying room.

    It was on the prow of the battle barge, and it was the size of a small cathedral. While the massive barrels of the macrocannonry that was used to fire shells at enemy ships had been retracted for the warp trip, there were still hundreds upon hundreds of chapel serfs, their robes cast aside to reveal ropy muscle, tattoos and augmentations, all gleaming and glittering with sweat as they worked in masses, shouting work songs. They were practicing the loading of the immense guns.

    And it...

    Annoyed you.

    Kit turned from a small kitten to his muscular self, grinning. "41-22, have you missed lunch and dinner because you're watching sweaty naked muscle men?"

    "This room is stupid!" You exclaimed, springing to your feet.

    "It's...a macrocannon, honey," Kit said, sounding amused. "How else should it work?"

    "There should be a machine that moves those shells - everyone being run on muscle power is stupid, we have a fusion drive!" You started to stomp around, rubbing your chin, then scowled.

    "No one knows how to make that kind of sorcery, not anymore," Kit said, his voice gentle.

    You frowned harder.

    Kit...

    Kit was very kind.

    He let you stay in your room, muttering and scribbling notes and chewing on your knuckles, and grumbling under your breath for a solid three days before he finally pulled you out and forced you to eat and drink some water. But with the food in you, you were unstoppable.

    The men were doing their practice on the macrocannon loading, shouting and hollaring to one another. You walked around the edge of the room, mostly unnoticed, until you found the long forgotten piece of machinery you were looking for. The first attempt let loose a loud squeal that caused several men to cry out in alarm. You had picked the time between hefting one shell and the next, so no one let go of any immense weights, fortunately. You spoke into the handheld transmitter and your voice boomed from the laud hailers.

    "Leave the room immediately," you said, firmly.

    Leave the room immediately. Your brow furrowed. There was an inner voice, crawling up and out of the back of your brain - one that expected to be obeyed. The serfs looked around, wildly, and then one of them dressed in the high crested robes that you recognized as being a serf watch leader advanced towards you.

    "You, I-" he drew up short, then scowled. "What is a little vatborn landling doing here with the terminix laudhailer!?"

    "This room is stupid," you said, unable to stop the voice in your mind from becoming the voice on your tongue. "It's big enough and has access to enough power to run motive force through hydraulic and pneumatic lifting machinery, the whole thing could be reloaded by five men on terminals, and you have five hundred sweating away, getting themselves injured and killed, to fire the gun every thirty minutes when we could be firing it every Emperor by damned five minuets!" You thrust the speaker into the box, advancing on the serf leader. "Do you understand how wasteful that is! For the price of zero point nought nought nought nought...nought two percent of the whole shield array, you could sextuple the firepower of the ship WHILE ALSO freeing this ENTIRE room to...do...do literally anything else! Anything at all!" Your arms spread wide. "Leave! Now! Immediately! I have to FIX this!"

    The serfs had gathered around you and were gaping at you, all of them shocked.

    "She's left leave of her senses," someone whispered.

    "All right, landling, lets call up a Battle Brother..." The serf leader said, turning to face one of his fellows. "And they'll-"

    "Fine!" You threw up your hands, then grabbed onto your great coat.

    With a single flick of your arm, you sent it flying away from your shoulders, the whole length of it crashing into one of the stunned serf's chests. He caught it, stumbling backwards.

    You wore a tank top, your arms exposed to the bright lumens, with your mask still covering your face. But your anima was what had them all gaping. A golden halo of crackling flames, sweeping around your body as your caste mark blazed through the rubber and leather of your mask, while losing the great coat had tugged your ponytail free, causing your curtain of brilliant red hair to tumble free in a spreading arc. The vast interlocking gears and the thunder of hooves both rang around you as you lifted your head, then sprang up, landing on the shoulder of the shocked serf leader. You leaped from shoulder to shoulder to finally land at the base of the huge crane that served as the pully.

    "We'll start with this!" you said, then started to grab components from the walls, ripping steel and bending apart adamant with your fingers. A glowing hammer of pure essence appeared in your hand and you started to beat the machinery into new shapes. Smoke steamed from your mask's filter, and your body flickered and flared brightly as the serfs sprinted away, screaming in alarm.

    "Daemon! Daemon!"

    In a few short moments, several Battle Brothers had arrived, wearing their full kit, holding their bolters. Captain Brutus led them - but he held up his hand. "What are you doing!?" He called out.

    You had completed the first half of the crane.

    "Working!" you called over your shoulder.

    You ignored them, and ignored it when Kit and Amberly, and one of the tech-marines came. The tech-marine watched...and then cried out, turning to face his fellows. They all spoke in hushed voices as you sprinted past them - then returned, your arms straining as you carried huge loads of scrap metal and replacement parts from the holds. While working on a project, it felt like your whole body was surging with energy, and you could work without break. Sweat beaded along your skin as you sprinted from place to place in the room, hammering, forging. Kit slipped into your dance of creation - and forced you to lift your mask enough to reveal parched lips. He poured water down your mouth, then...stole a kiss...

    You hesitated for an eternity.

    A solid...five, six seconds.

    Then you were back to work. And by now, the serfs had been coaxed to return, and you found many helping hands waiting to carry, to fetch. Scaffolding rose as you snatched a catnap - and dreamed of actuators, gravshafts and tygers, burning brilliant bright as you chased after them, through an endless dark forest.

    ***
    ​
    "God Emperor above..."

    "It really works."

    "Well, she may be annoying, but she's good at the...the...cogboy stuff."

    "It really works."

    "It's so quiet..."

    "Can we replicate this on other ships?"

    "Please, be quiet."

    That was Kit's voice, a rumble that made you enjoy mashing your face against your pillow. They were all coming from beyond your tent. Mmm. You liked being in a tent. Then memories returned - you were on a tent in a spaceship? Your brow furrowed and you sat up in the quiet darkness, feeling your face bare and shameful. Your mask was just where you reached for it, and when you emerged, wearing your tank top and leggings, you found a cadre of battle brothers, including a tech marine and Aurora, all standing about a makeshift tent pitched in the corner of a vast, glittering room. Silvery machinery, flowing like water, smoothly lifted, loaded and then shifted down to acquire more shells. The batteries themselves were still retracted, but the housings were open and ready to accept their next salvo, while the shells themselves were surrounded by thick armor-steel plates and autoflooding cisterns. Gleaming bulbs of fire suppressing systems and several gleaming terminals were placed here, there.

    You saw four...dessciated corpses, withered and fallen on the floor.

    "What do we even do with those?" Captain Brutus asked, back turned to the tent - unaware you were peeking out.

    "We keep them until we know what the...what did you say they called her?" The Tech-Marine asked.

    "Oh, lots of silly things," Amberly said, flicking her hand dismissively. "Warpsmith, Mistress of Gravitics..."

    "Well, Herald of a Thousand Stars might be more likely," the Tech-Marine said, nodding. HIs grille covered face was youngish, but his eyes showed a great deal of experience and depth in them. "This auto-loader is remarkable, I don't think the Lex Mechanica have these - or if they do, they don't admit them..."

    You stood, brushing your hands off. "Uh...i hope...you don't mind, I got a little...enthusiastic."

    "Enthusiastic!?" Captain Brutus asked, turning to face you, laughing and clapping his hand on your shoulder. "Now, use that enthusiasm, what do you want to do with the servitors?"

    Your eyes, hidden behind the flat glass of your mask, flicked to them, blinking.
    ---
    Hmm

    [ ] Nothing? They're irrelevant to the machinery? Give them a proper recyce?
    [ ] The basis of some new murder servitors!
    [ ] ...put them in stasis. You're not sure why, yet. But there's gotta be a reason...
    [ ] Write In

    Health: Fine
    Anima: Dim
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 11 | GXP: 18 | WXP: 11

    Making Purity Seals: spends 1sxp to use Arete Shifting Prana, gets 9ss which is enough to shift all her dots into the right craft. Since she got a ten, she gets 1 sxp back! Then she makes the five purity seals required - 6s, 10s, 9s, 7s, 6s! hits all 3 basic objectives (the serfs like it, helps ship run well, your intimacy towards healing the galaxy) AND each one is superlatively skillful, for a total of 9 SXP each! Also, from her tens, +1, +2, +2, +0, +1 which is thrown into pot.

    Also, +1 GXP each time.

    Also, I just noticed you get SXP and GXP every *story* just inherently for having skills, all NPCs and PCs do. So, you have two 5+ dots and one 3+ dot, giving you 13 SXP, and since you made an artifact, you get an additional 5 GXP for making that lance manse ontop of what you already earned, so you have +64 SXP and +10 GXP!

    So, next, she comes upon a gunnery team practicing. That's not gonna do, she'll make them an autoloader.

    Converting 83 SXP into GXP using Sublime Transference gets ya 72 GXP. She spends five weeks building furiously, then unleashes herself!

    So, 3 GXP to forge a single 3 dot artifact slot. Then she gets 6 rolls using 10 GXP each time! Diff 5, Terminus 6, and she needs 50 successes! Lets go!

    Each roll has re-rolled 10s, re-rolled 6s, double 9s, and a full excellency! The first two rolls ALSO get +1 success and +1 dice before she's out of excess GXP.

    ROLL ONE: 15s, +3 SXP (15 total successes)
    ROLL TWO: 9s, +1 SXP (24 total successes)
    ROLL THREE: 5s, +1 SXP (29 total successes)
    ROLL FOUR: 12s, +3 SXP (41 total successes)
    ROLL FIVE: 10s +2 SXP (51 total successes!)

    Completed!

    5 WXP and 6 GXP, +1 GXP for a charm, plus the 10 SXP for the tens she rolled!

    And now, the battle-barge has an auto-loader, allowing it to fire its weapons without needing to spend actions to reload! This will matter a lot in the near future.
     
    Last edited:
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    • Distress of the Omnisiah (4.4)
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    • You looked down at the withered bodies. Your brow furrowed behind your mask, and a bead of sweat dripped down one sleek, muscled arm. You didn't know why you did what you did. But you felt your lips moving before you said anything: "...put them in stasis. We'll figure them out later."

    The space marines exchanged glances, but the tech-marine was the one who got to work. He started to walk forward.

    And then the entire ship lurched. Hard. Kit moved with fluid grace, catching you and Amberly in his huge arms, holding you both to his sides as one of the battle brothers was flung off his feet, sent careening into the wall. Cries of pain and agony shouted from throughout the corridor beyond the chamber - and you realized with a lurch that if this room had been as full as it had been...

    "Report!" Captain Brutus shouted into his vox.

    "Captain," a gruff, male voice rumbled. "There has been an unusual warp eddy that has ripped our ship off course. We have translated to realspace to assess. There is..." He paused. "By Ultimar, you need to see this, Captain."

    Brutus turned and nodded to you. No, not to you.

    He nodded to Kit.

    "Hey!" Amberly exclaimed as Kit snatched her and you up under his arms and then you and Brutus sprinted down the corridor, the two matching paces. The space marine moved with remarkable, almost impossible grace - his armor flowing like water around his bulky form as he launched himself forward with bounding leaps. Kit, for his part...was taking it easy.

    He wasn't even breathing hard.

    ***
    ​
    The bridge of the battle-barge Hammer of Jove was large and sparsely populated. A single massive hololithic table that now flickered where someone's elbow had cracked into it sat in the center, while several large chairs were built in the small niches set in the wall for terminals and servitorized bodies, wire cables running from their bald, withered heads and into the walls. The terminals themselves have lecturns and smoking candles, and the space marines who were strapped into their places wore their battle armor, despite this not really being a combat zone. That turned out to have been quite a good idea: There were scuffmarks and dents, but no dead space marines. That could not be said for some of the chapter serfs who had been taking up positions on the bridges. Three pitifully still bodies, their forms draped in blankets with the blue and gold heraldics of the Ultramarines had been set aside, and a battle brother even now knelt over them, whispering a soft prayer as a serf with her arm in a sling lit candles and set them beside the slain.

    The man in charge of the bridge was a tall, brash looking space marine with dusk brown skin, a bald pate, and a quite impressive bristling goatee. He nodded to Brutus, while Brutus turned to face you and Amberly. Amberly, her commissarial ego and bigheaded nature quite affronted by being carried through a multikilometer sprint under someone's arm like a portable krak missile launcher, was brushing her greatcoat into some proper shape. You, not concerned with any such absurdities, instead made sure your mask covered your face as was proper, and then stepped forward.

    "What's the-?" you started, then realized you had spoken over Brutus, who had just said. "This is-"

    "Bridge Master Francisco," he said, nodding curtly. "You are the Krieger."

    "And more," Brutus said, his voice soft. "But first, what is it you wished us to see?"

    Francisco turned. "Battle Brother Church, bring up the forward vista-plate view of the anomaly."

    "Yes, Bridge Master." Church's fingers worked controls enlarged to fit a god's hands.
    The gleaming glass and adamant plates that looked out on the cold vastness of space grew a shimmering hololithic projection, which then expanded, then expanded again - turning what you had thought was a nebular cloud of gasses into a swirling miasma. Smaller, and closer, than you had expected. The frothing, spurting, hissing material was coalescing into solid chunks of matter the further it streamed from the rent in space it came from. Your mind, bright and full of lore you never remembered learning, spat the idea into your mouth before you could help yourself.

    "It's a warp rent!" you exclaimed, walking forward to the vista plates, pointing with your fingers. "The warpstuff is emerging - and it's essentially being turned by our reality into whatever degenerate matter that can be comprehended - earth, dirt, water, air, simple hydrocarbons. This means it's...either natural, or a not particularly guided manifestation. There must not be many demons involved, but...oh my, what is that!? Enhance the screen at 45 by 55!"

    Captain Brutus nodded to Bridge Master Francisco. Bridge Master Francisco nodded to Battle Brother Church. Battle Brother Church finally pushed the four buttons to magnify the view even farther. Within the center of that swirling mass of warpstuff were two objects. The scale was nigh impossible to tell - one was an elegant dagger of gleaming white material, studded with glowing domes of orange and gold. It had two vast jets of flames spurting from the sides - blue white plasma exhaust, dragging it away from the warpstuff. But transfixed upon the dagger's long body was a sphere of glittering metal and hissing, gouting vents of steam and smoke. It was like a knife had stabbed into the heart of some titanic voidstation.

    "An...Eldar Craftworld..." you whispered. "But what is that?"

    "Eldar Craftworlds do not use the warp. They use the webway, what on Terra is it doing here?" Captain Brutus asked.

    "Captain!" Church's voice broke in. "We are recieving a broadband vox transmission."

    "From the craftworld?" Captain Brutus asked.

    "No...I don't recognize the language," Church said, frowning.

    "Play it on the laudhailers," Bridge Master Francisco said, curtly.

    The voice started to play.

    "What language is that..." Kit whispered.

    "It sounds human," Amberly said. "A human voice, at least."

    "It's coming from the sphere, definitely," Captain Brutus said.

    You frowned, cocking your head, brow furrowing.

    "Me am Make Defense Home Place Rho-22 A, Clasat end of land spot, need most soonest now time help from all Eight Place spearmen in wide road...much much ouch...badness wide road coming fast...again say, Me am Make Defense Home Place Rho-22 A, can anyone make listen of me!?"

    You blinked.

    "Well, that's got to be the worst Old Realm I've ever heard," you said, frowning.

    The entire bridge turned to look at you.

    ---
    What do you do?

    [ ] Contact craftworld
    [ ] Respond for more information
    [ ] Approach and render aid to the mysterious orb
    [ ] Approach and render aid to the Craftworld
    [ ] Wait and see!

    Lore! 9s! beating the diff 5 easily to ID the warp rent

    6s to ID the craftworld

    Health: Fine
    Anima: Dim
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 11 | GXP: 18 | WXP: 11
     
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    • Gremlins (4.5)
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    • "Bring us in close!" you said, immediately, without thinking. Captain Brutus gave a curt nod and the battle-barge shuddered from its head to its toes, the bridge shivering and quivering around you as the engines kicked on. The strange collision ahead of you started to swell as you hurried to Battle Brother Church's console. You pushed a few buttons, adjusted a knob, then tugged a purity seal off and flicked the switch hidden beneath it to activate the motonic transmitter that you were fairly sure hadn't been used for six, seven thousand years.

    "What are-" The space marine asked as you adjusted the speaker, then spoke into it.

    "Eldar, this is the battle-barge Hammer of Jove, I am 41-22, a Twilight...er...uh...a..." Your tongue caught up with your screaming sense of propriety. You looked aside, then turned back - and focused instead on what mattered. "I-I know that we enemies, Eldar and humanity. BUt your people are in peril, and we do not come to make war. We want to help. What has happened?"

    There is a long pause, while the two immense structures come closer and closer.

    "Mon'keigh..." A voice came over the line, elegant and faintly musical - inhuman, despite it speaking remarkably elegant Gothic. "I will risk the fates of my people and believe you. This is the Craftworld Iyanden, and we have...come upon a most unexpected doom, far outside of the fates painted for us by the runes."

    "What...happened, exactly?" You asked.

    "Oh, my 41st Twilight, that I wish I can explain to you," the musical voice said, and you swore it sounded mocking. Who would mock someone at a time like this? "But it is an impossibility. The Webway is empty of all others, save those who know her ways. And yet, something blundered into the way of our craftworld. We pierced into it, and were saved from much loss of life only by the shields and armor of our vast home...and...for their being so little lives to lose. Now our guardians and warriors array themselves between ourselves and what foulness lurks within yonder metal orb."

    You frowned. Your eyes drifted up to the vista-plate. The engines of the Hammer of Jove had brought you close enough that you could see the seemingly endless, fractal complexities of the orb that the craftworld had pierced into. There was a bizarre optical illusion before your gaze - the narrow, knife-sharp edge of the craftworld had pierced several kilometers into the orb, which itself was maybe...a hundred or so kilometers wide. And yet, as it wrenched itself slowly free with its vast plasma engines, the hole it had left seemed to be an infinitesimally small cut, revealing endless more layers within. Your brow furrowed - then you shook your head again.

    The orb was sick.

    It was sick. There were queasy, bio-organic shapes in the machinery. Organs and pustules the size of small hab blocks, threading between gears and electro-machinery. It almost looked like the interior of a voidship...

    "Chaos..." Captain Brutus whispered.

    "Seems like it," Kit said, his voice grimly determined.

    "Captain!" One of the other battle-brothers spoke. "We are detecting movement and energy emissions from the unknown sphere. It's-"

    The sphere is not that large, in the grand scheme of things. It is about the same size as the craftworld, after all.

    And yet...

    Somehow.

    A shape pulls from it. It stretches and groans, uncoiling and tugging free, more and more and more, ripping itself out of the bowels of the sphere. Metal spills into the void, gears and sparking capacitators. Crystal chunks buzz and crackle. The something appears to look like a vast, sinuous snake - a snake as long as the craftworld, a snake that could loop around and around and around the Hammer of Jove and grip it. Its maned head opens and a roar that echoes across the void and into your head booms out. Your hands clap to your ears as the battle-brothers grunt and stumble, Kit hissing, and Amberly scowling intently as she glowers at the vista plate.

    "What in the Emperor's name is that!?" Francisco boomed.

    "Our auspex say it is primarily comprised of carbon, oxygen, industrial pollutants...it's as if the atmosphere of a hive world began to move!" the battle brother on the auspex exclaimed. "...wait! I'm detecting another energy signature. It's powerful - but small." The vista-plate view swirled wildly and then locked in. A bead of bright blue light was soaring out of the sphere. It was so small...human scale, pitifully tiny against the immense shape.

    A crackling voice came over the line - more of that terrible Old Realm.

    "Make fight Oberashti! Great Maker be with I."

    "They're fighting that thing," you said, poitning.

    "A being of that size?" Captain Brutus. "How?"

    The tiny bead of light shoots past the snout of the immense snake, and a sudden flash of red flares as whatever they bear slashes across a nose the size of a battleship's prow. The vast snake jerked his head back - and wings unfurl from his shoulders.

    Not snake.

    Dragon.

    And he roars - but the roar has words, words that cut through language, speaking deep into your mind.

    A buzzing metal gnat...you dare stand between the Shogun of Genocide and his quarry? You dare protect the enemies of the Maker? You have much temerity, Champion. But you shall die, as will they.

    "You not work right! You madness been become! Me never stop!"

    The figure unleashes a sudden peppering of bright blue pulses - beams of light scything through the void, leaving winking sparks along your eyes. THe impacts slam along the neck of the dragon Oberashti, causing it to jerk and writhe. A vast gout of reddish smoke explodes from its jaw, spraying towards the tiny flying figure...but one thing about the void? There was a lot of space to dodge into, and the figure zipped away, a tiny bead of light. The vista-plate pict-captors were just...not fast enough to get a close enough view. You wanted to know what could put out...the...you leaned over Church's console.

    "That's a sub-lance energy emission! Close on par with a lascannon!" You exclaimed, then turned to Captain Brutus, unware that a gleaming Twilight caste symbol glowed on your brow, adding its weightiness to your words. "I think that-" you pointed at the dragon. "-is a kind of autonomous defense system that's gone wildly out of control. The people that live in the orb are trying to stop it before this accident becomes genocide. We have to help them! And I think-"


    ---
    You spent 6 motes, but this is combat so you've recovered 5 this round!

    [ ] "...we can fire on it with the ship guns."
    [ ] "...Amberly, Kit and I can take a thunderbolt and engage it alongside the Champion."
    [ ] "...we can fire on it with the ship's guns while Amberly, Kit and I take a Thunderbolt to engage it alongside the Champion."
    [ ] Write In


    Health: Fine
    Anima: Glowing (-2 to stealth)
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 27/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 11 | GXP: 18 | WXP: 11
     
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    • Gremlins!? (4.6)
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    • You turned to Brutus.

    "We're going to handle that," you said.

    "But...how!?" he asked.

    But you were already starting off, sprinting away, essence burning in your skin, greatcoat in hand.

    ***
    ​
    "I hasten to remind you, neither of us know how to fly one of these things, and their seats are built for space marines, and I doubt Captain Brutus is going to just give us one of his battle brother pilots and-" Kit was saying as you two bounded up the gangway of the Thunderbolt and into the narrow corridor that ran along its center, past the large cocooned seats that served for the demigods who would normally take it into battle. Hatches set here and there ran to the ball turrets and implanted weaponry, but as you approached the cockpit, the seat spun around and Amberly was there, her commissarial cap tilted back at a jaunty angle, her blond hair spilling around her shoulders.

    "You!" you exclaimed.

    "You said we," she said, smirking.

    "How did you get here before us?" you asked.

    "Did you sit in that chair, waiting for us to arrive?" Kit asked, his voice less accusatory and more amused.

    Amberly, rather than responding, had turned back to the console. She looked a bit like a girl-child, seated at her father's desk, playing with his data-slates and trying to act like a big important boss woman. If only her clothing had been oversized as well and the illusion would have been complete. Illusion or no, the Thunderbolt lurched and started to cruise towards the buzzing, humming voidshield array that stretched over the hanger bay. You stumbled, lurched, and finally got to the side of the seat, grabbing on with all dear life.

    "Can you fly a thunderbolt!?" you exclaimed.

    "How different from a skycar can it be?" Amberly asked, cheerfully, her dainty fingers closing around a yoke meant to be hauled about by biosynthetic steel fists the size of her entire upper torso. The thunderbolt screamed through the void, darting out and away from the battle-barge. Ahead of you, the snarling, hissing dragon was twisting on itself, trying to bring its claws to bear on the figure darting around it. You saw it hadn't taken any damage - whatever those lascannon blasts had done, they hadn't actually hurt it. Maybe it had all been for show? Just to get its attention. It swiped a claw the size of the prow of the battle-barge herself, and cleaved through space so fast you were fairly sure it would have registered as a kiloton impact on a planetary surface.

    The spark was gone.

    Had he struck it?

    Was that heroic Champion - whatever that was - scattered into fragments.

    "We're coming in hot!" Amberly said, cheerfully.

    The dragon grew. And grew.

    And then thump. The entire Thunderbolt lurched down and you, Kit and Amberly jerked your head up. A crackling voice came through the laud-hailer built into the lecturn...and spoke perfectly understandable Low Gothic. "I don't know where you people came from, but praise the Great Maker for you."

    "Great Maker...she must mean the Omnisiah," Amberly said. The voice had been feminine, you had picked that much up. "Whoa!" Amberly yelped, then yanked back on the yoke. Whatever had landed on you clung to the upper edge of the thunderbolt as you flew up and away from a massive, sweeping claw. The voice crackled through the grille.

    "We need to find a way to disable Oberashti - he's a lesser elemental dragon, so he's no joke. But this...madness of his, he blew past an entire cadre of the best Clerics we have," the woman riding atop you said. "If we kill him, Ku is going to be pissed."

    You grabbed the speaker-captor from Amberly just as she started to say 'who the bloody hell is Ku' and instead: "Hold on!" Then you turned to Amberly. "Get us closer."

    "Close? ...okay!" Amberly said, biting her lip. The thunderbolt flared and screamed forward on hissing streams of thrust. Amberly flew towards the dragon's belly - then banked up hard, arcing and twisting, so that when the dragon came down to bite the thunderbolt. It wasn't trying very hard - you were pretty sure if it had moved as fast as it had been before, it would have managed to kill you in a single instant...as it was, Amberly twisted up and away from its nose before the chomp happened and you got a great view at the top of the creature's body. The head was covered with...strange...

    Not growths.

    Buildings.

    Protrusions of black metal, gears with an almost organic froth surrounding them, cables and wires. It was all sick. It was all wrong. And it was driven directly into the creature's brain. Surrounding the buildings were hideous mockeries of the Tech-Priest's art. Flesh was stretched between gears that connected in no logical fashion, while crystal nodes emerged from eye sockets and buzzed and crackled in complete disregard of the proper rites of the motive force. You thrust your finger.

    "Heretics!" you said. "Tech-Heretics have taken control of this...this...machine spirit! I think it's a machine spirit."

    "Elemental of Smoke, actually," the voice over the grille said - and you started. You hadn't even spoken into the speaker-captor. "You have an odd way of speaking - but you are...a..." She paused. "Are you lever-puller? You have the mask for it, and the coat."

    "She is 41-22, and a natural magos," Kit said, grinning impishly as he got ahead of you. "An artificer unlike anything the galaxy has ever seen."

    "An artificer! Hah! I'm kitted for combat, not artifice - maybe you can fix Oberashti before-"

    The massive dragon roared again. Enough! Submission equals Truth! Endings ...Endings...Endings equal...Equal... His whole body shuddered. No! He gnashed his teeth, and his head flung to the side. I serve...Ku! The Minister of the Far Reaches! The Regulator of Smoke! I serve...the God of Mysteries and Fear! I...stand between the future that must not- He trembled, then roared. Submission Equals Truth! Submission! Equals! Truth!
    "The tech-heretics are overwhelming the machine spirit's righteous abilities!" you said, immediate understanding blooming. "We have to stop them!"

    The flesh of the huge dragon writhed - and in great, bloody chunks, scales tore and what looked a whole awful lot like multilasers started to spring up like acne on the face of someone who didn't know how to change their mask properly.

    "Oh Emperor!" Amberly whispered, at the same time the voice of your passenger came through the grille.

    "Oh Great Maker."

    It seemed worlds apart, cultures diverged, and yet, humans remained humans.

    ---
    What do you do!?
    [ ] Land at the least defended part of Oberashti's back and fight your way up on foot
    [ ] Try and land at the head, risking the essence cannons
    [ ] Ask Amberly to try some Sidereal Bullshit and pray!
    [ ] Write In


    Health: Fine
    Anima: Glowing (-2 to stealth)
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 11 | GXP: 18 | WXP: 11
     
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    • GREMLINS! (4.7)
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    • "I'm taking us down!" Amberly said.

    You did the only logical thing to do in such circumstances.

    You began to pray, whispering so soft that it was muffled up in your breather. The starfield spun wildly as Amberly twisted hard on controls that were far too large and far too durable for her hands. Bright flashes of blue-white light exploded from the weaponry sprouting on the back of the gigantic reptile, and several of them whipped past the Thunderbolt's wings. more than a few shot towards the front window - but before they struck, a body moved before the cockpit and the narrow prow of the ship.

    They were humanoid, that much was certain. They were clad in gleaming blue and gold armor, somewhat similar to power armor, though you saw no carapce that made it swift and mobile - and it was carved to a feminine figure. But from her back spread two...wings? Save they were not wings at all, they were narrow metal limbs that unfurled glimmering, wispy energy that formed the shape of feathers without their physical presence. She held in her right hand a hilt and from that hilt burst a crackling red field of energy that just barely formed the shape of a sword's blade. Her left bore a shield, the edges covered with serrated teeth like a chainsword's blade. Steam hissed from vents along the small of her back as her arm blurred into motion - intersecting again and again with incoming pulses of energy, reflecting them away with bright sparks.

    "I can't see with you in the way!" Amberly shouted.

    "Would you rather be splattered!?" The woman barked - looking back over her shoulder.

    She was not wearing a helmet.

    And she was not human. Her skin was sky blue, and her hair was bright red - but not the red of a Cadian, no, it was the red of silicate crystals or the mineral worlds of the far frontier. It was metallic red, and each 'strand' was a crystal the size of your thumb. Then she looked back ahead, parrying an incoming blast with her shield, then with her sword, both impacts causing her to stumble back, her body filling the entire vista-plate.

    "Emperor damn it!" Amberly snarled, then plunged forward. The engines screamed and the entire ship twirled hard and-

    The sudden ringing in your ears and the feeling of your mask being almost knocked off your face sent you scrabbling. You grabbed wildly, caught onto Kit's arm, and blinked at him. He was holding onto a dangling leather strap - while Amberly cackled as she threw the throttle even faster. The strange woman on the hood of the ship had caught onto the port side of the cockpit window and was clinging on with her fingernails.

    The starboard side of the cockpit was gone. A glowing, cherry red hole tore away all save for a bit of sparking console, a few dangling cables, and the feet of the copilot servitor. You gaped at the void whistling past. Then, loudly. "Why are we not depressurizing!?" You exclaimed.

    "The Emperor protects!" Amberly said, cheerfully.

    "Not that much!"

    The dragon was filling the forward vistaplates - Amberly, somehow, had bent fate and gotten the Thunderbolt almost to the scales. Then the entire cabin lurched up and down with the impact as she skidded to a stop, thrown against the controls and then yanked back. Kit, unmoving, kept you rooted with a single burly arm.

    "There we are," Amberly said, sighing and springing to her feet, drawing from nowhere her laspistol - aiming and firing a flurry of shots. Several techno-organic horrors that were rushing up at the side of the Thunderbolt fell back, screeching. "Now, what's the plan? I say we go straight for the brain of this Emperor be damned monstrosity and put it down."

    "Can we even go out there? Is there air!?" You exclaimed, while the blue clad, blue skinned, blue winged woman swung around to fill the hole, her wings folding shut as she dropped into the thunderbolt. Her grin was brash.

    "Hello!" she said. "I'm the CSA Vengeful Crystalline Hawk. Nice boat." She patted the side of the thunderbolt.

    "It's called a Thunderbolt," you said.

    "No, it's a Thunderhawk," Amberly said.

    Your brow furrowed and then you scowled, then stomped across the Thunderhawk's cockpit to stick your gloved hand experimentally beyond the edge of the twisted metal. You didn't feel the void out there. But you did see several of the hideous creatures that had camped out on the vast dragon were rushing up into positions - they carried crossbows, and three were dragging a large essence cannon with wheels on the sides to make it easier to move. You had a few seconds to decide how to handle this fight, and so, you stuck your head out and swept your gaze around. The Thunderhawk had landed right in the middle of the main settlement of creatures, near three huge buildings that were attached to the skin and, from the furrowed welts and pustules growing around midnight black scales, burrowed into the brain of this beast. There were lots of people that looked like human but twisted and augmented into something...more.

    Or far less.

    They had enough heavy weapons to turn the Thunderhawk into bubbling slag, if you let them.

    And on your side, you had this Hawk lady, who looked tough and armored enough to give a space marine a run for their money, and Kit, who was just pure murder on two legs. And then there was yourself - with the Lens Lance, it wasn't as if you were a slouch in combat. Also, Amberly was there. Your brain whirled through all of this in a single flash and you said...

    ---
    What are your plans?

    [ ] We all push for the big building - we free the snake, we end this.
    [ ] Amberly and HAwk, keep our Thunderbolt safe, Kit and I will hit the main building
    [ ] Lets clear this town out, then circle around to the main building once we won't be shot in the back
    [ ] Write in


    Health: Fine
    Anima: Glowing (-2 to stealth)
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 11 | GXP: 18 | WXP: 11
     
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    • Percussive Maintenance (4.8) New
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    • "We push for the big building! We save this big snake, we save everyone!"

    "He's not a snake!" The hawk-winged, blue skinned woman snapped, then sprang forward, leaping into the air. You saw that there was one tiny problem with your plan as you, Amberly, and Kit all headed down the gangplank.

    "Chip their chits!" A man with a grille for a jaw and a writhing mass of biorganic tentacles called out, thrusting his metal fingered right hand out in a dramatic point. A half a dozen emplaced...you knew they weren't firing multilas at you, but they sure felt like the barrage of several hull down Chimera as they whined and hissed overhead, streams of blue light slamming into the side of the Thunderhawk and others splattering into the scales that served as the writhing ground here. Stars wheeled by crazily overhead, giving you a gut deep sense of vertigo, even as you threw yourself flat behind a glistening pustule of gleaming steel.

    "We can't advance in this!" Amberly snapped, then vanished.

    "...where'd she go!?" You exclaimed.

    "Doing her bullshit I suppose," Kit said, frowning. "I think- "

    "Here!"

    Vengeful Crystalline Hawk was no longer using Low Gothic to speak to you - you supposed it was because she had disconnected from the machine spirits of the helpful Thunderhawk. But her Old Realm wasn't so bad you could mistake the helpful note in her voice as she twirled by overhead. Her wings folded, clicked, and swung to her sides as her back opened up, revealing a complex apparatus of nozzles. From them spat five, six, ten spikes, slamming down into a geometric pattern. The tip of each spike glowed blue and lines of light flicked out - and where the lines traveled, plastecrete formed, metal and adamant plating slid into place, and within seconds a bunker had been erected that would have done a Kreiger proud.

    Your grin was feral behind your mask.

    "I like her," you whispered.

    "Noted. I'll handle the flanks, you draw their ire," Kit said, then kissed your cheek - leaving you flushed as he turned into a sleek hawk and joined the Champion in the skies.

    You sprang to your feet, grabbing scraps blown off the Thunderhawk as you leaped over a glistening vein of throbbing, coppery red rust and then landed at the entrance to the bunker. The inside was full of gears, cog wheels, and yes, what had to be a statuette of the Omnisiah, even if you had never seen this particular devotional touch. The feeling of being surrounded by faith and purity and justice against all the insanity of this new world struck you so dumb that your hands worked entirely of their own accord to turn some dozen kilos of scrap, burnt parts, and blown actuators into a heavy bolter, Kraken pattern.

    You slammed it into a slot that was built for it at the firing slit - then blinked as an articulated arm unfolded, then socketed a feedline from it to a machine built into the roof of the bunker. A voice chirruped in that terrible Old Realm - but...you were beginning to get the sense that it wasn't babytalk. It was just a divergent tongue. Translating quickly, you understood.

    "Ammunition Feedstock Prepared. May you Smite the Enemies of the Great Maker. In his Name. Bless."

    You smiled behind your mask, worked the bolt, and then opened fire on the hideous abominations that had surged from the larger buildings and started to rush towards your thin battle-line. Streams of mass reactive shells swept back and forth over the horde. Technognostic horrors blew apart under the impact of bolt shells, and their fellows wavered, their shrieks of chaos damned devotion - cries of 'For the Violator!' and "null equals division!' breaking apart almost as rapidly as the flesh and machinery that made up their unholy bodies. You grinned...then yelped.

    Because the multilas had all opened fire on the bunker at once. Strobing pulses of sickly purple and putrescent green light flickered over plastecrete and adamantine, and some flashed through your firing slit as you took cover, just like you had in creche training. Your eyes widened behind your eyeholes as you saw the impact sites on the far side of the bunker. A glistening pustule had been left behind by one. A spreading stain of rust by the other.

    The beams are spreading taint! You thought, dizzy, as you scrambled up - and saw that the covering fire had let the horrors you hadn't killed come at the bunker. They scrabbled against the walls and tentacles thrust in through firing slits, bearing weapons ranging from automatic crossbows that clattered and clicked - firing off bolts that pinged and bounced off concrete and metal walls - to buzzing sawblades that flecked blood and rust everywhere as they swept around. You sprang away from your bolter, eyes widening more as you realized that the hardpoint had the advantage of letting you get close to the enemy...but now, it had trapped you.

    "Need a slit trench next time, need to give her-"

    Blood started to gush in through the slits. Roaring. Snapping. Hissing sounds. Then a severed head flew in through a slit.

    Then, Kit peered in, smiling at you in the sudden silence. "Hey 41, you okay?"

    You tried to not let all your breath out in one sigh. "Yes! Fine!" You hurried to the bolter, ducking as a lasbolt hissed overhead, nearly shooting you through the head. Kit shook his head slightly, his grin wry.

    "I think this bunker has served it's purpose, don't you?" he said.

    "...yeah." You snatched up your lens lance from where it floated.

    "Need a lift?"

    His grin was insolent. He didn't even notice how close a lasbolt came to his head, ignoring it as mossy tendrils of organic growth started to sprawl along the plastecrete near his shoulder.

    You flushed, then muttered. "...yeah."

    He reached in and dragged you through the firing slit - then threw you, like you were the spear. You twisted in the air, brought the lens lance around, and slammed directly into the middle of the three heavy emplacements where the horrors were firing at you. The man you impaled had spiderlike limbs attached to his back, each made of greenish brass, and his eyes widened as he looked down at the blade buried in his heart.

    "Null-"

    You twisted and gravitational forces blew him and half the others apart in a spray of gore. You stood, lifting your head.

    "Your math is all wrong," you said, casually.

    "Shoot it! Shoot the axiomatic fool!" A screeching woman shouted. You sprinted to the left, their multilas stuttering after you, sending up spurts of molten metal - you were on the building proper now - and then you ducked into the barrel of their smoking weapon, sweeping one's leg out from under them, bashing another in the head, and finally, thrusting your blade into the throat of the last one. The final multilas aimed at you...and fired a single, desperate shot.

    You jerked aside a fraction of a second before it hit.

    The beam whistled past, and you felt the sizzle of near corruption.

    The crew of the last gun gaped at you.

    Then each cried out, and fell.

    Behind them, Amberly stood, smirking and twirling her laspistol as she holstered it, having shot each in the head.

    "You're welcome!" she said, cheerfully.

    As she did so, the Champion landed with a thump beside you. "That was amazing!" She said, cheerfully. "Are you Militat or what?"

    ---
    What to do with Amberly
    [ ] Glower at Amberly
    [ ] Argue with Amberly
    [ ] Kiss Amberly!?

    What to do with the building
    [ ] Try and repair Oberashi
    [ ] Sabotage the building so it blows up, incapacitating Oberashi


    Abstracting Kit, Amberly and Crys into their own background fights cause I'm laaaaaaazy. Each one can provide assistance one time when it is cool!

    There are five enemies left for 41 to face: Two battle groups of Gremlinized humans with autoxbows, and three who are manning the rapid fire motonic pulse cannons with dissonance focusing lenses that induce Gremlinization effects on a hit or parry

    Mob one
    Size 2, Drill Poor (-2 to run rolls), Might 2
    Attack: 10d | Defense: 4 | Withering: 17d

    ROUND ONE
    41: 11 ini
    Mob One: 7 ini
    RFMPC 1: 7 ini
    RFMPC 2: 7 ini
    RFMPC 3: 7 ini
    Mob Two: 5 ini

    41 goes first! The RFMPCs are at medium range, so she cannot get to them. Crys flies by and uses her Deployable Bunker Fabricator to toss down heavy cover and 41 is going to move to short range, and flurry taking cover in the bunker and using Craftsmen Needs No Tools to make a heavy bolter for the bunker. She gets 6s to take cover and gets a mere 2s to make a heavy bolter, a shockingly bad roll for her!

    Still, that's all three basic objectives, so that's 9 SXP and 7 GXP! Not bad! Also, she has a heavy bolter!

    Mob one moves into short range!

    RFMPC 1, 2 and 3 open fire with withering attacks. 41's defense is bumped from 4 to 6 thanks to heavy cover, so they roll their shots and get 6s, 5s, and 4s! Each applies a -1 onslaught penalty so, 6 vs 6, 5 vs 5 def, and 4 vs 4 def! She can stunt to evade each, but it's CLOSE.

    Mob two moves into short range

    ROUND TWO
    41: 11 ini
    Mob One: 7 ini
    RFMPC 1: 7 ini
    RFMPC 2: 7 ini
    RFMPC 3: 7 ini
    Mob Two: 5 ini

    41 is going to use the heavy bolter to open up on the advancing mob! She has a +4 to hit thanks to their range, and is rolling 15 with a free piercing to boot (allowing her to ignore 4 of their 8 soak) so, she rolls and gets 9s against their defense of 4! So, she hits by 5, doing 20 base, 16 post soak, for a total of 9 damage! This gives her +1 ini and drops their magnitude from 9 to 0, and drops their size from 2 to 1. They make a rout check and roll 1s against a difficulty of 2 (1 for base, +1 for losing a point of size), so, they're running.

    The RFMPCs fire again: 7s, 4s, 6s! That's 7 vs 6, 4 vs 5 and 6 vs 4. She can still stunt them away, but eep!

    Mob two, then, takes advantage of her defense being 3 and swarm in at the bunker. Fortunately, it's hard to get at her even with pikes, so she's still got her +2 defense from the bunker. Unfortunately, they get 8s - far beyond what even her stunt can accomplish. She still does so, purely to drop their damage dice from 22 to 19! Still, her soak kicks in and drops their damage to 13, and they roll an ALARMING 11 successes, dropping her to a perilous 1 ini!

    ROUND THREE!
    RFMPC 1: 7 ini
    RFMPC 2: 7 ini
    RFMPC 3: 7 ini
    Mob Two: 5 ini
    41: 1 ini

    Time for Kit to save the day - I said each friend can help once per combat. He'll savage Mob Two with an absurd 12 damage, dropping them a whole size, then using one of his combat charms to attack *again* when they succeed on their rout check (rolled two tens!) and does 7 more damage, which in total is enough to drop them to size 0 - killing the lot of them.

    Meanwhile, the RFMPCs split their fire between him and 41! They get 2, 2 and 7s - which she can dodge with a stunt. Fhew!

    Now, 41 brings the heavy bolter around and opens fire on RFMPC 1 and gets 8s to hit against his defense of 4, for 15 damage in total after his soak. 9 ini stolen, which CRASHES him, putting her at +5 ini atop that, for a total of bringing her to 15 ini!

    ROUND FOUR!
    41: 15 ini
    RFMPC 2: 7 ini
    RFMPC 3: 7 ini
    RFMPC 1: Crashed!

    With the way cleared, 41 bounds from the bunker with a single reflexive move action, bringing her from close to engaged range with the motonic cannons. She lances number 2 with a decisive attack and gets 7s to hit - a clear hit! Her 15 ini means 15 damage dice, doing 8L. That guy is DEAD

    RFMPC 3 fires at her, but since they're in melee range, his to hit has dropped from +4 to -2, from 12 to 6! He gets 2s, and misses, while RFMPC 1 fires and gets 2s as well - two misses in nearly point blank range!

    ROUND FIVE
    RFMPC 3: 7 ini
    41: 3 ini
    RFMPC 1: Crashed!

    RFMPC 3 throws it all on the line: Decisive! This does not add accuracy at all, so it's his best shot to do ANYTHING! ...he gets 2s, so, at least he tried!

    41 smacks him for 6s, doing 13 damage dice of withering, which pops her to +8 ini and totally crashes his ass, giving her +5 atop that!

    RFMPC 1 shoots at her, and gets 4s! Which actually comes close to hitting, save that she dodges with a stunt.

    ROUND SIX

    41: 16 ini
    RFMPC 3: Crashed
    RFMPC 1: Crashed!
    Another decisive attack hits and does 9L damage! Down goes RFMPC 3 - and Amberly will take out the last guy to show off.


    Health: Fine
    Anima: Dim (No effect)
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 10 | GXP: 25 | WXP: 11
     
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    • Wench in the Gears (4.9) New
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    • Ashley was so damn smug. Your glowered at her behind your mask - while the back of your mind already started to puzzle out the possibilities of theomantic sophisant-lenses for burning away corruptive essence in the inner working of a god machine. This left your forebrain working on another problem: How to wipe that stupid smug smirk off her lips.

    "Well, it seems I have managed to rescue you once again, 41-22," she said, chuckling as she put her gloved fingers against her chest. "Note that it also was my powers that allowed us to breathe on the surface of this mighty wyrm - and it got us here in the first place. I think you will find that I have been-"

    You stomped forward and gave her precisely what she was asking for - in a way calculated to completely short out her brains. You leaned in, then tugged back your mask just enough to free your lips, then kissed her on one cheek, then the other. She froze, spluttering to a stop, precisely as you had planned. Kreigers normally would have used a simple brush of the resperator, but you had to adapt to her off planet strangeness. Your entire regiment had actually been given the quick reminder that certain shows of normal affection between friends that Kreigers took for granted would throw some offworlders into strange apoplexies.

    Amberly's cheeks burned, and you ruffled her hair, grinning as you reached up with your mask. "I suppose-" you started, about to say something quite cutting, when Amberly took hold of your shoulders, then yanked you in. Your mask was almost knocked off your face by her nose as she pressed her lips to yours, soft and eager and warm. Your arms flailed, wildly, and her tongue probed against yours, gently, then more and more eagerly.

    Infuriatingly?

    She was...really...

    Really good at...

    My second kiss... you thought, dazedly, as she drew back, panting softly.

    "...what...was that!?" you managed to choke out, voice filled with confusion as you grabbed onto your mask and hastily yanked it back below your chin, glad you had only showed a bit of nose and lip and some jaw and cheek and oh Emperor you were mortified.

    Amberly blinked. Her mouth opened. Then her face took on a strange complexion - pale white save where she flushed floridly, her freckles standing out in sharp relief. "Uh...it...was...revenge!" She said, jerking away from you. "Revenge! For you kissing my cheeks s-so forwardly!" She said, brushing her hands along your shoulders, as if she was trying to righten up your great coat. You swore, for a second, she had gotten a few buttons off. You shook your head, then scowled at her behind the mask.

    "You thought we were romantical!?" You spluttered, unable to find any better word for it.

    "I never!" she exclaimed. "You are an absurd creature."

    You grabbed her hair, ruffling it, as if she were a child. "You're the absurd creature!"

    "Hey!" she exclaimed, her commissarial cap tumbling off her head as you tousled her hair up. She grabbed for it - while you turned, heart thundering and head spinning with confusion and irritation. Trust Amberly to ruin a perfectly good prank with her starts. You found that Kit and Crys were both looking at the two of you, their brows furrowed.

    "Wager on when they do it?" The Champion said.

    "I don't know what you said, ma'am, but yes," Kit said, nodding cheerfully.

    You glowered at the two of them and, without a word, headed for the door leading into the building.

    In the distance, you heard the squalling of more gremlins. And overhead, you saw the Eldar Craftworld swing by - the vast wyrm still caught in the throws of its passion, torn between death and duty.

    ***
    ​
    The building's door was a kind of automated door like anything you'd see on a voidship - but it was all wrong. The door was vertical split rather than horizontal, for one thing. There was no purity seal for the opening invocation chamber. And the entire thing was studded with glistening pustules of flesh, throbbing and pulsating between gears and clockwork. As you came close, it opened automatically, wheezing and gurgling as it slid apart. "Ugh..." you whispered, then said. "Don't touch anything."

    "Understood," Crys said, her wings mantling, then folding, snapping together and retracting into her body, smoothly vanishing away as her armor sealed around where they had been before. You blinked, then turned back to her, trying to decipher how exactly she made the wings fold away. She looked at you curiously. "What?" she asked.

    You put that aside. You'd dismantle her later to find where and how it all worked.

    The interior of the building was a large space and...looking it over?

    You could...see...how it worked.

    In all its horrifying grotesquery.

    There were four nodes of dark soulsteel, refining and shaping hungry po and han spirits that had been deliberately separated and spun in a neostatic centrifuge to accelerate their evolution to hungry spirits, then fed back into the nodes, which themselves were ringed with moonsilver and starmetal neural-crystalic latticeworks that ran towards a central adamant spike, driven directly into the mechanical brain of the big snake. The effect was like blasting his entire brain with Blight energies - driving him towards doom, despair, anarchy. You shuddered as your brain flicked like a switch, and you saw it all clearly.

    Someone had built a sintactic heresy engram and stuck it into a machine spirit that would make the fearsome Titans seem like children's toys.

    It wasn't just that it needed to be removed. The effect of the engram had to be reversed, somehow.

    Your hand rubbed along your cheek, thinking.

    How to do it swiftly, though?

    Or was swiftly the right way to do it...

    You realized the problem...might be too big for you to handle. Your gut churned as you saw even your intellect and preparation had limits. It was daunting, to realize that there were things in the galaxy you couldn't fix. There were so many steps you could see between what you dreamed of and what could be. It wasn't possible to do it all, not fast enough, not by yourself.

    And then...

    A tiny voice whispered in your mind.

    There happens to be a craftworld full of the mightiest craftsmen of this age...right over there...

    ...could that...

    Could that...

    It was intoxicating. Impossible. But you saw the possibilities. No. The Eldar would never - memories of the last time you...they had...

    No.

    But...

    He had failed to even get their aide. He had stolen. You had stolen.

    But if...

    Your hands went to your head.

    "What is it?" Kit asked.

    "I-I think we need to get the Soldaties here," Crys whispered. "It's not like we know how to do anything, eh, soldier boy?" She elbowed you.

    You didn't even think to correct her.

    ---
    [ ] Set to overload, painlessly killing the beast (Major Project, diff 5)
    [ ] Do a patch job - stopping the expansion, but not reversing it (A several hour Superior Project, requiring 50 successes over six diff 5 rolls)
    [ ] ...no. You can do this. You just need time and help. Jerry rig a recursive mental loop, stunning the beast. (Major Project, Diff 10)

    To fully fix Oberashi - which will do more than reverse the heresy engram, but actually revert him to his "factory settings" when he was first crafted by the Great Maker, countless eons ago - will be a Legendary Project, requiring someone with 5 Lore, 5 Craft: Artifact, and 5 Occult. Something you don't have access too!

    ...or do you?

    (Also, it'd take a whopping 200 successes in 6 rolls, which is also going to be a hell and a half.)

    Rolling int+occult to decipher, getting 6s vs diff 5

    Health: Fine
    Anima: Dim (No effect)
    Willpower: 5/5
    Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
    Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
    XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
    Major Projects: 0/5
    SXP: 10 | GXP: 25 | WXP: 11
     
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